Less than Human? Diaspora, Disease and the Question of Citizenship
| Author | Parvathi Raman,Ian Harper |
| Published date | 01 December 2008 |
| Date | 01 December 2008 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.2008.00486.x |
Less than Human? Diaspora,
Disease and the Question
of Citizenship
Ian Harper* and Parvathi Raman**
ABSTRACT
The aim of this special edition of International Migration is to bring about
discussion between those conducting research in Diaspora Studies and the
Anthropology of Public Health and Medicine. Historically, international
migration has been associated with the transport of disease. Regardless of
the evidence, metaphors of plague, and infection have circulated and been
used to marginalise and keep out diaspora communities in host countries
in an effort to ‘exclude filth’. Migrants have been referred to in terms such
as the ‘Asiatic menace’ indicating a virus-like threat to local populations.
We look at the impact the traces of these images have on current host
nations’ perceptions of diaspora communities and also ask what impact
does this have on the diasporic communities’ self-perceptions, if any? Does
this affect conceptions of belonging, or feed into continuing dialogues of
displacement? The movement of people has long been associated with the
spread of disease and infections. In light of this, we are concerned with the
role of medical knowledge and practices in relation to diaspora communi-
ties, and how these discourses have contributed to the perception of dias-
pora populations by host societies, and helped shape wider questions of
belonging and citizenship. We aim to look at these questions in their his-
torical context, both in their continuities and discontinuities, emphasising
the importance of this to an understanding of current practices. Circuits of
migration, and connected medical practices are taking new forms, where,
on the one hand migrants are still associated with disease and pollution,
but on the other migrants are also increasingly staffing the infrastructure
of western public health services. At the same time, the west can no
longer lay claim to ‘superior’ biomedical provision. These shifts signal new
* School of Social and Political Studies, University of Edinburgh.
** Department of Sociology and Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies, Uni-
versity of London.
2008 The Authors
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., Journal Compilation 2008 IOM
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, International Migration Vol. 46 (5) 2008
and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. ISSN 0020-7985
doi:10.1111/j.1468-2435.2008.00486.x
directions in the relationship between medical discourse and diasporic
‘others’, giving rise to a contradictory language of migrants being seen as
both a threat, and a solution to the ‘health of the nation’.
‘‘The British people deserve the best standards of public health. We
need to control who is coming to Britain to ensure that they are not a
public health risk and to protect access to the NHS. It’s plain common
sense’’ (Michael Howard, 2005, during the conservative election cam-
paign in the UK)
‘‘The presence of the immigrant is a source of surprise and, whatever
intentions he is assumed to have, there is always the suspicion that he
is at fault. He comes under suspicion of disturbing the aesthetic order,
the political order, the social order and especially the sanitary moral
order (immigrants are the victims of all kinds of cliche
´s: they cost the
social security ‘dear’, lead to overcrowding in hospitals, and carry dis-
eases), also the cultural and moral order (one loses count of the
offences immigrants are supposed to have committed against the code
of ‘behaving properly’ or the code of good manners, of their barba-
risms and their infractions of the rules of polite society), in a word the
national order (they are foreign to our history, our national existence,
our national interests), and sometimes, when times are difficult, the eco-
nomic order, even though they are its very obedient servants (more so
than ever, immigrants are now inevitably seen as surplus to require-
ments)….’’ (Sayed, 2004: 206)
THEORIZING DIASPORA AND HEALTH
In the 1990s, one of the dominant themes that emerged from the field of
Diaspora Studies was the notion that diasporic populations could poten-
tially help reconfigure the political geography of the nation state, and
transcend its borders with new global assemblages of collectivity that
challenged its authority (Gilroy, 1993). One of the arenas where this is
apparent is in the interaction between medical practice and diaspora,
but with conflicting outcomes. In the introduction to this special edition
of International Migration we chart some of the theoretical terrain and
issues where diaspora and medical practices interweave as a foundation
for the papers that follow.
Although a privileged elite do seem to be enjoying what appears to be a
progressively ‘‘borderless world’’ (Ong, 1999) it has become increasingly
evident that for a large majority, borders are not only being reinforced,
but are being redrawn in ways that determine rights of citizenship and
even more profoundly, the very ‘borders’ of what constitutes ‘humanity’
4Harper and Raman
2008 The Authors
Journal Compilation 2008 IOM
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